The View from the Hermitage, Day 400

Day 400. Do I hear a five? Five hundred? When will we hear a "sold" to indicate that we're emerged unscathed--or not--from the pandemic? One hundred days from now will be in late July, about the time schools should be deciding how they will start the academic year. I really hope that this year they start as they traditionally do, in person and on time ready to go the distance through the semester. I'm not sure The Professor can take another year of asynchronous instruction, especially not if they figure enrollment in a virtual class is not limited by the size of a classroom and let 500 students enroll.

Interestingly, it's not been easy to find coronavirus coverage of where we are here in the US, at least not specific coverage. Starting today, all Americans 16 and older are eligible for vaccination, though the ones 16 or 17 can only get the Pfizer vaccine. Dr. Fauci says that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could be back in use with warnings or restrictions by the end of this week. That would increase the number of vaccinations that could be done. There is concern, however, in some quarters that a new emphasis on getting the younger folks vaccinated might backfire in terms of lessening emphasis on the one-fifth of people 65 and older who have yet to be vaccinated. 

There are counties that deserve kudos for having vaccinated more people proportionately than most others. Unfortunately, many of these counties have hit a saturation point with fewer and fewer people signing up to be vaccinated. Malheur County, Oregon, for example, has a mobile unit ready this week hoping to distribute 2,000 doses. Public health officials say distributing half of those would be a "tremendous success."

The website endcoronavirus.org sorts states and countries into three groups: those that are beating covid, those that are nearly there, and those that need to take action. Right now, there are no states in the beating covid category, though Guam and the US Virgin Islands are. The fifty states and the District of Columbia are pretty evenly split between the nearly there and needing to take action groups. Virginia is in the latter category, I am sorry to say. Michigan remains a real hot spot, and has one tenth of the British variant cases in the US.

Assuming that the role of government during a pandemic is to save lives and save jobs, the state that has been hit the hardest is New York. New York lost 55,000 jobs per million people, second only to Hawaii, the economy of which is pretty much based solely on tourism. New York had 3,300 extra deaths per million people, on a par with Arizona and Alabama. The worst state based solely on excess deaths is Mississippi, which had 3,800 excess deaths per million people. Interestingly, there were two states with net job gains: Idaho and Utah. No reason for those job gains was given, and I haven't been able to come up with my own explanation. 

Dr. Fauci late last week butted heads with Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) over the issue of continued restrictions, accusing Dr. Fauci of working to deprive Americans of their freedoms. Dr. Fauci noted the irony of 45 percent of Republicans who won't get vaccinated while wanting to be free of restrictions. He noted that the core issue was a public health, not a civil liberties one. I remain unable to fathom why so many Republicans, or people in general, refuse both mitigation measures and vaccination. It seems so simple to me. I need to keep in mind my brother-in-law's observation that half the people have IQs under 100 and see if that helps.